By Ed Rampell What is even the point of writing a review about such inspired madcap mystical mirthfulness? Honestly Dear Reader, you should save your reviewer the effort and simply just go see the concoction and confection that is the Will GeerTheatricum Botanicum’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Geers’ effervescent version of the Bard’s dream-like yarn is such rip-roaring good fun that it should suffice to say, that if you love yourself and believe you deserve to have a good time, get thee to a Topanga amphitheater. Yet review it I shall -- once more into the literary breaches, lads and lasses! Where shall I begin in describing this surreal romantic romp written with quill and ink way back when Amazons were female warriors and not online book retailers, and pixies not pixels reigned?

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James Del Bonis's insight:

[PICTURE (INCLUDES SIDE ARTICLE)]

The image of puck featured in this article (http://jestherent.blogspot.com/2013/07/theater-review-midsummer-nights-dream.html) helps illustrate that Puck, along with the rest of the mystical creatures, is less civilized than the humans in the story. Puck in particular is relatively savage. The costume designer took the concepts implied in the book and applied them to the design of the character in the movie the post is talking about.

Discusses the lighting of outdoor theatrical stages during the time of English dramatist William Shakespeare or the Elizabethan era. Ways in which the daylight convention permitted nighttime scenes on a sunlit stage; Effects of natural conditions and the playhouses themselves on the quality of illumination; Modes of staging that will benefit from open-air lighting conditions.

James Del Bonis's insight:

[HISTORICAL ARTICLE]

I think that this article provides some information on the Elizabethan era's Globe theater. Specifically how the theater was set up during different times of day. It gives some detailed examples of specific situation in the theaters. It also includes several notes about some of the techniques that playwrights used during writing plays during the time. This was a very interesting read.

In an essay called "On the Value of Hamlet," Stephen Booth has shown how that play simultaneously frustrates and fulfills audience expectations and otherwise presents contradictions that belie or bedevil the attempts of many a reductionist critic to demonstrate a coherent thematic pattern in Shakespeare's masterpiece. Booth's commentary is particularly directed to the language and action of act 1 which, from the very outset, arouse in the audience a "sensation of being unexpectedly and very slightly out of step" with the drama that the players unfold. "In Hamlet," Booth says, "the audience does not so much shift its focus as come to find its focus shifted."1 The end result, though initially disturbing, is not finally so: "People see Hamlet and tolerate inconsistencies that it does not seem they could bear.…Truth is bigger than any one system for knowing it, andHamlet is bigger than any of the frames of reference it inhabits. Hamlet allows us to comprehend—to hold on to—all of the contradictions it contains."2

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James Del Bonis's insight:

[CRITICISM]

I think that this article provides a well-written criticism of the book. It clearly looks at Midsummer down to the very details of the book. It tries to determine why Shakespeare chose the words he chose. In my opinion it does a pretty good job of it. It goes through several passages and analyzes them. The author finds even the most subtle details.

What I think it interesting about this project is that it is quite a good representation of the conflict the lovers had to go through. Although there isn't any elements brought in by fairy characters it shows a, short, rough parody of the original play. While it is not very professionally done, they clearly put some work into making it funny. It is very well-made in my opinion.

Corinthians (2:9) when he awakens from his dream: “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was”? (4.1.207–10).1 Why does he mangle this gospel verse synaesthetically, crossing hearing and vision, tasting and touching? This essay examines the theologically inflected sensorium of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream by taking ancient theories of “syn-aesthesia,” or “sensing-with,” as models for theatrical phenomenology."

James Del Bonis's insight:

[ALSO A SOURCE ARTICLE]

This criticism and critique article is an interesting take on how Shakespeare took some references from biblical literature as his sources. Clearly the author had some significant knowledge of the Christian Bible, or at least the New Testament. They make several links between the play and the Bible. This article also talks about how A Midsummer Night's Dream may be looking at, or even satirizing the Protestant Reformation that had taken place a couple of centuries prior to Shakespeare's time. I think the author is very well spoken.

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